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New Podcast! Scannain Podcast (2018) #43!

Posted on November 15, 2018 by Darren

It’s time for the latest Scannain podcast! A somewhat abridged edition this week, due to time constraints.

This week, I join Jay Coyle and Grace Duffy to discuss the week in film. As usual, we talk about the top ten and the new releases, as well as what we’ve watched this week. In this episode, Jay discusses continues his disaster movie marathon with Volcano and the questionable inclusion of Cliffhanger. Varda Season continues apace. Meanwhile, Grace gets into the Christmas spirit and walks us through some highlights of her binge of research into Netflix’s Christmas films.

The news this week is abridged, but there’s a brief discussion of the passing of Stan Lee and the awards given out by Irish Film London before the Irish Film Festival London.

The top ten:

  1. Hurricane (Squadron 303)
  2. Goosebumps II: Haunted Halloween
  3. Overlord
  4. Johnny English Strikes Again
  5. Smallfoot
  6. The Nutcracker and the Four Realms
  7. Widows
  8. A Star is Born
  9. Bohemian Rhapsody
  10. The Grinch

New releases:

You can download the episode here, or listen to it below.

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Non-Review Review: They Shall Not Grow Old

Posted on November 15, 2018 by Darren

They Shall Not Grow Old is a marvelous technical accomplishment, and an adequate if flawed documentary.

A lot of the debate and discussion around They Shall Not Grow Old focuses on the manner in which director Peter Jackson has “updated” or “remastered” existing archival footage of the First World War to bring the documentary to life. They Shall Not Grow Old features real footage of the conflict shot at the same time, albeit digitally manipulated do that it could be rendered in high definition, in colour and widescreen. There are certain segments of film fandom that view this as an act of cinematic vandalism, of destruction of the historical record in a desperate populist bid.

However, this overlooks the substance of They Shall Not Grow Old as an actual documentary, reducing Jackson’s attempt to craft a visceral and tangible record of the First World War to a piece of trivia or a cinematic novelty. This is both a disservice to the documentary itself and also something of a boon. The narrative that Jackson is attempting to reconstruct with the materials available to him is interesting, perhaps much more interesting than debates about one particular facet of the movie’s production.

They Shall Not Grow Old is an ambitious effort, but it is also a deeply flawed one. Its flaws are in many cases interwoven with its virtues, with everything that makes it so unique also serving to impose rigid formal boundaries upon the work that Jackson cannot escape simply by reframing his footage.

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Non-Review Review: The Girl in the Spider’s Web

Posted on November 14, 2018 by Darren

The Girl in the Spider’s Web is essentially a high concept shorn of any sense of authorship.

Lisbeth Salander is one of the very few breakout fictional characters of the twenty-first century, a concept that immediately latched on to the public imagination following the publication of Stieg Larsson’s Män som hatar kvinnor in 2005. Salander was a character who seemed to speak to the turbulent new century, a digitally native avenging angel who unleashed her wrath against a violent and misogynist establishment. Salander seemed to speak immediately and viscerally to her moment.

Phoning it in.

A Swedish language film was released four years later, featuring a career-defining performance from Noomi Rapace, which seemed to be enough to singlehandedly assure the young actor an English-language career. Hollywood quickly noticed and immediately commissioned a remake that would be directed by David Fincher, and which would go on to be nominated for five awards. Rooney Mara would effectively launch her career with a Best Actress nomination for her performance of Salander.

All of these are incredible accomplishments for a character and concept that in someways seemed clichéd and nineties. Män som hatar kvinnor was the kind of serial killer narrative that has been ubiquitous in the nineties, but largely supplanted by terrorist stories in the new millennium. As an archetype, Salander was very much of a piece with cyberpunk hackers with which Hollywood had clumsily flirted in movies like Hackers or The Matrix or Johnny Mnemonic.

Snow escape.

Salander was elevated by two things. The first was a prescient understanding of the appeal of a feminine avenging angel dismantling systems of misogynist oppression. If anything, Salander seemed ahead of her time, and should be perfectly pitched for the #metoo moment. However, the other important aspect of Salander was a strong sense of authorship and craft. Noomi Rapace embodied the character in the Swedish-language original, and David Fincher helped to elevate pulpy material to top-tier filmmaking in the American reimagining.

All of this makes The Girl in the Spider’s Web an interesting , if deeply unsatisfying case study of what happens when anything resembling a distinct creative voice is ripped away from Salander and she is stuck in a much more bland and conventional film. The results are deeply frustrating, but affirm the level of talent involved in the character’s earlier adventures on page and screen.

Everything burns.

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Non-Review Review: Colette

Posted on November 14, 2018 by Darren

The story at the heart of Colette is familiar, even to those with little knowledge of its inspiration.

Colette is a story about the eponymous French writer, who rose to fame on the back of a series of novels that fictionalised her own life through the lens of a character named Claudine. Keira Knightley stars in the title role, a young woman from the country who finds herself swept into Paris by her older and more established husband. Publishing under the pen name “Willy”, Henry Gauthier-Villars is something of a cad. He is quick to capitalise on his wife’s artistic voice and to claim her successes for his own. Meanwhile, Colette struggles for her creative freedom and to find a way to express herself.

Go, West!

The broad strokes of Colette are fairly routine, the film following the rhythms and structures of the modern historical biography. Reflecting the modern creative and political climate, there is a great deal of emphasis placed on Colette as a feminist narrative, the story of a young woman trying to assert control over her own voice and come to terms with her own identity. It is certainly a timely story, even if Colette follows the standard biographical film playbook beat-for-beat. Very few developments in Colette come as a surprise, and many of the film’s twists and reversals are helpfully signposted from the get-go.

However, Colette works much better than that assessment might suggest. A lot of this is down to a clever and nimble screenplay from Richard Glatzer, Wash Westmoreland and Rebecca Lenkiewicz. Colette is aware of all the marks that it needs to hit, and that frees the screenplay up to be a little playful in how it develops its beats and what it does when it hits each mark. Colette is a fascinating hall of mirrors, a movie packed with twisted reflections and symmetries, luxuriating in the blurred boundaries between reality and fiction. Coupled with a pair of charming lead performances, this elevates Colette very well.

A picture-perfect marriage.

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Non-Review Review: Fantastic Beasts – The Crimes of Grindelwald

Posted on November 13, 2018 by Darren

Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald knows its audience.

The Crimes of Grindelwald is a film consciously aimed at the audience member who has charted and navigated the family trees of the Harry Potter franchise, who knows the finer details of families that were never explicitly featured in the original series and who can recognise names that were never spoken aloud. This is a film that is geared towards the kinds of fans who devour supporting material, who pour enthusiastically and endlessly over the appendices to The Lord of the Rings.

Law student.

This is not to mock or belittle those sorts of fans. Indeed, there is something infectious and exciting in that enthusiasm, in standing outside a cinema and hear enthusiastic six-year-olds with a much better grasp of the dynamics at play than the adults who accompanied them. The eagerness with which these fans pour over the finer details is genuinely heartening, and some of it might even be absorbed by osmosis as they boast about “when” they “got” some twist or other. This a movie aimed at those who devour scenes of exposition and love a good flashback or six.

The only issue is that The Crimes of Grindelwald has precious little for the more casual audience member, whether the casual cinema-goer who just wants a night full of wizards and witches or the more relaxed fan who has only watched the films or read the books once a few years ago. For those audience members, The Crimes of Grindelwald does not offer nearly enough. Or it offers too much.

Partially wanted for crimes against fashion.

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Non-Review Review: Disobedience

Posted on November 13, 2018 by Darren

Disobedience is the statistical mean derived from its premise, filtered through the lens of modern awards fare.

Disobedience is the story of two women trapped within the Orthodox Jewish community in contemporary (or close to contemporary) London. Ronit Krushka returns home upon receiving word of her father’s death. Her return shocks the community, which is still recovering from the scandal of her departure years earlier. Ronit arrives to discover that her old friend Esti and her cousin Dovid have married in her absence, Ronit’s return serving to stoke old tensions and poke at still-healing wounds within the community.

Rachels’ Vice.

Disobedience is an adaptation of Naomi Alderman’s novel, and is very much an archetypal example of contemporary prestigious drama. Disobedience is effectively a delivery method for a set of striking performances from its leading triptych, but is also largely anemic; this is a movie that confuses inertia for profundity and lethargy for restraint. Disobedience is populated by characters who seem more comfortable talking around things rather than about them. There is undoubtedly an argument to be made about such an approach seeming naturalistic, but here is largely dull.

Disobedience seems afraid of its central tensions, wary of navigate a minefield that it has chosen for itself. The result is a movie that feels largely ornate. It has a great cast and some big ideas, but never seems to know quite what to do with either.

Touching reunion.

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New Podcast! Scannain Podcast (2018) #42!

Posted on November 12, 2018 by Darren

It’s time for the latest Scannain podcast!

This week, I join Jay Coyle, Ronan Doyle, Grace Duffy and Doctor Jennifer O’Meara from the Dublin Feminist Film Festival to discuss the week in film. As usual, we talk about the top ten and the new releases, as well as what we’ve watched this week. In this episode, Jay discusses The Other Side of the Wind, Ronan rewatches Waltz with Bashir, Grace celebrates Netflix Christmas movies, and Jennifer contemplates The Congress.

The big news feature this week is Doctor Jennifer O’Meara discussing the fifth annual Dublin Feminist Film Festival, which is taking place the 20th-22nd November in the Lighthouse Cinema. Jennifer walks us through some programme highlights. We also discuss the iffy short film festival, Netflix’s collaboration with Nora Twomey and Cartoon Saloon on My Father’s Dragon, a recent Prime Time Investigates look at reports of bullying the Irish film industry and highlights of the Screen Ireland funding decisions for the third quarter.

The top ten:

  1. 7 Emotions
  2. First Man
  3. Venom
  4. Halloween
  5. Goosebumps II: Haunted Halloween
  6. Johnny English Strikes Again
  7. The Nutcracker and the Four Realms
  8. Smallfoot
  9. A Star is Born
  10. Bohemian Rhapsody

New releases:

You can download the episode here, or listen to it below.

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Non-Review Review: Cam

Posted on November 12, 2018 by Darren

The most horrific aspects of Cam have little to do with the literal monster lurking at its core.

It is almost half an hour before the central plot of Cam kicks into gear. It is a credit to both director Daniel Goldhaber and writer Isa Mazzei that Cam sustains itself as a horror even through this (relatively) long establishing stretch. There is something inherently skin-crawling about that extended introductory sequence, which is essentially a depiction of “business as usual” for central character Alice. The opening scenes of Cam very skilfully and very creepily capture the commodification and performativity of both cam-girl-ing in particular and social media in general.

Time for reflection.

Watching the opening stretch of Cam, the audience might read social media itself as the monster, a horrific force capable of warping and bending individuals to its will. Even before Alice realises that something is wrong, there is a sense that the audience has taken a trip through the looking glass. The pink neon glow, the way the camera snakes down hallways, the casualness with which Alice picks up her dinner from a delivery man while covered in corn syrup (and little else), the repeated framing of shots to emphasise mirrors and screens as images trapped and projected.

Indeed, the obligatory bridge between the second and third acts of the film might be the biggest issue with Cam, the clumsy in-universe explanation of the strange entity lurking at the centre of the story and function that it performs. However, this is a testament to the quality and imagination of the rest of the film around that exposition. The monster in Cam is so familiar and so relevant to contemporary society that it almost needs no explanation at all. Cam is so effective a horror story that it arguably doesn’t even need its monster.

“Feed me.”

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Doctor Who: Demons of the Punjab (Review)

Posted on November 11, 2018 by Darren

“What have you done? Who’s coming?”

“The future.”

Demons of the Punjab is in many ways a companion piece to Rosa, touching on and developing the core themes.

It is interesting, in large part because Demons of the Punjab feels like a much more confident execution of many of the same ideas. It is a lot cannier in how it chooses to construct its central story, avoiding a lot of the smaller and finer details that haunted Rosa. It helps that Demons of the Punjab is a much less showy story. It is not a “celebrity historical” in the same way as Rosa was, avoiding the temptation to cast Lord Mountbatten as a companion. It also avoids setting its closing credits to a triumphant pop song as systemic racism endures.

Flagging enthusiasm.

Of course, the fundamental issue with Rosa remains. Demons of the Punjab is very much of a piece with Rosa when it comes to reconfiguring who the Doctor is and the function that she serves. The Doctor is no longer a time travelling radical or an anarchist. She is not a “mad woman with a box.” She is instead somebody who travels through time to “bear witness”, to acknowledge suffering that has occurred rather than trying to heal it. The Doctor is no longer a triage surgeon or a concerned medic, instead more of a cosmic mortician. There is something rather bleak in that.

That said, Demons of the Punjab is a very effective and very powerful piece of television. If Doctor Who is to embrace this approach to the Doctor as a character, this is certainly the best way to go about it.

The Four Horsemen.

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104. Double Indemnity – w/ The Movie Palace (#88)

Posted on November 10, 2018 by Darren

Hosted by Andrew Quinn and Darren Mooney, The 250 is a fortnightly trip through some of the best (and worst) movies ever made, as voted for by Internet Movie Database Users. New episodes are released Saturdays at 6pm GMT.

This week, a special crossover episode with The Movie Palace Podcast, a film podcast hosted by Carl Sweeney taking a look at the classics of Hollywood’s golden age. Carl suggested a crossover episode taking a look at the list, and particularly some of the classic movies listed on it.

So this week, Billy Wilder’s Double Indemnity.

Regarded as one of the earliest codifiers of film noir and one of the strongest examples of the form, Double Indemnity is the tale of door-to-door insurance salesman Walter Neff. Through chance, Neff wanders into the life of a young wife by the name of Phyllis Dietrichson. When they get together, it’s murder.

At time of recording, it was ranked the 88th best movie of all time on the Internet Movie Database.

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